What to do in the off-season

[dancingfool]

Some team's are all year round, it depends on what you feel best suits your team.
We turned to a year round structure last summer and it helped us so much this year.It allowed us to get things that weren't robot related out of teh way so that when build did come, we didn't have as much on our plate as we had in the past.
We use our 'off-season' to recruit new sponsors, as well as give final updates to our current sponsors about how the season went, what we did, etc... We also use the summer to revise our team documents (such as our business plan and By-laws), and hold/participate in more community outreach events, and demo's for schools (this usually happens right after nationals). This year we are going to be doing some maintenance of our server and work on re-designing our website a little bit. We are hoping to also at least start working on our awards submissions for the following year.

As mentioned previously, the 'off-season' is a great time to teach. We use off-season events to show interested students what a competiton atmosphere is like, and the prep for those competitions as mini-build seasons/training sessions. It's also a great time to let returning members do a little mentoring.
Now, this past year was my senior year and I'm not a mechanically inclined person so i handled most of the business aspects of the team (talking to judges, awards submissions, etc...) but the off season allowed me to find students that were interested in the business stuff I worked on and train them so they know exactly what needs to get done next year and how to do it. I found it a lot easier to do after build then during, just because it wasn't as hectic; not that it's impossible during build, because some of the learning has to be done that way, but we all know tensions can get high. lol

[mplanchard]

Watch TV - really.

Take a look at www.LetsGoDesign.tv, a new interactive web series by SolidWorks. Follow my friend and fellow engineer Jeremy Lucini as he takes you through the design process of a new product. Its not a robot, but the concepts of engineering design are classic - whether you are in a competition or developing a capstone design project. You can vote on which way the project will go, do you choose Steel or Aluminum, do you choose option A or option B?

Episode 1: Importing hand sketches and getting things to take shape
Episode 2: Trying out some radical ideas
Episode 3 : Making partnership and simulating the design

Episode 4 will be released shortly marrying beauty with manufacturing techniques and driving a sustainable design

LetsGoDesign.tv uses engineers and designers from SolidWorks and our customers. Design ideas are driven from the SolidWorks community. Its pretty cool.

Marie